28th September 2017 - Thursday

Unfortunately the last day of our holiday had arrived. Our flights were at 9:30pm so we had plenty of time during the day. We checked out of the suite at about 10:30am, left our bags with the concierge and headed to a nearby diner for breakfast. Smiti had recommended it to us and it was underneath a bridge next to central station.

The interior was nice and cosy. We were seated almost immediately in a nice booth by the window. We both knew exactly what we wanted, I order waffles and Kathryn chose chocolate pancakes. I suppose those orders were pretty ordinary for them and the food came back out in a matter of minutes! It was really nice, although we have a waffle maker now at home, but they were still nice to have.

After the diner, we walked over to the Rockafella centre which was a short distance from the station. We went so Kathryn could visit a stationary shop we had found to get some stuff. We contemplated going to the Top of the Rock, which is the observation deck there but decided against it. We sat outside by the main plaza in the middle. We enjoyed the last of the sunshine and nice weather.

On the way back to the hotel we popped into the coffee shop one last time and grabbed a sandwich for lunch.  This was not so much a holiday thing, but I was keen to get the subway to JFK airport as we had plenty of time before our flight. This is because, the taxi fare is at least $60 each way, which with the poor exchange rate, means that you need to budget almost £100 just for taxis to and from the airport.

Unfortunately for travelers, for some reason, possible because a lot of integrated transport systems, the journey to JFK from downtown is kind of fiddly to do. Thankfully the weather was a bit cooler today, we made the short walk to the subway. The first obstacle was the barriers, but I’d read online that you just pass them over the gates,  which we did. For some reason there isn’t really even disabled access that is available.

We had to ride one stop, and change to the E train. This was to ride the subway to an interchange just north of the airport. This train was actually a bit quicker than I was expecting. It took about half an hour, and as we passed each station the amount of passengers thinned out and we were able to get some seats.

Once at a place called Jamaica centre, we transferred to the Airport Train. This required leaving the subway and walking to another lobby, and entering again. The air-train arrived within minutes and it took about another 10 minutes to get to the terminal. So all in all, not too bad. The total cost was $7.75 each to certainly a considerable saving if you have the time, patience and energy.

We had sort of, overestimated the time needed to get to the airport, and we checked in around 4pm, about 5 hours before our flight! We went through security and at least the airport had plenty of shops to amuse ourselves with.  We bought our allowance in tequila (1 litre each!) and had some dinner before finally boarding at 9:30. We sat until almost everyone had boarded so we were able to get onto the plane pretty quickly.

The flight was as uneventful as you could imagine a night flight being. Again, we had the extra legroom which was great. Although the background noise was quite high, I was able to sleep for 1 or 2 hours. We had a bit of a shaky approach as the weather was terrible in Manchester when we arrived. We were quickly able to get the train to Leeds, and then a further train back home. We made it back by 12:30pm which we were pretty happy with.